Sunday Night’s Joyce interview could backfire in more ways than one

Seven’s $150,000 payment to Barnaby Joyce for an exclusive interview on the network’s Sunday Night program will go to air this Sunday at 8.30pm after House Rules and that has given a big headache and a gamble that could very well backfire.

It’s all to do with the timing of the program next Sunday night. The most logical time to run it would be at 7pm to maximise the audience from the huge lead-in Seven’s hour of news delivers — between 1.6 and 1.9 million viewers on most Sundays. Seven presently starts House Rules, its “reality” program de jour, at 7pm to try and take advantage of that lead-in (often its the largest TV audience of the week). At the moment, it is starting the weakly performing House Rules at 7pm and it runs to 8.30pm when Sunday Night sometimes starts (it is not shown every Sunday night, which hasn’t helped it appeal to viewers).

But if Seven were to show the Joyce-dominated Sunday Night episode at 7pm and run House Rules straight afterwards, the network runs the very real risk of a huge turn-off from the news to the rest of the evening and the departure of hundreds of thousands of viewers to other networks or Netflix or Stan — or an early bedtime. Starting Sunday Night 7pm would heap extra pressure on the under-performing House Rules, meaning poor figures from 7pm onwards, and opening the way for The Voice on Nine and MasterChef on Ten to do better than they should.

Broadcasting Sunday Night though after House Rules will also suffer because (if you take last Sunday night) there was a 550,000 viewer turn-off from House Rules to Sunday Night (that episode’s main story was about Jacqui Lambie being back in the dating game). That’s a guide to what could happen next Sunday night. And a ratings loss on the night will turn the $150,000 into a very big expense.